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littlesparkvt writes in with a bit from Space Industry News about Bigelow Aerospace's plans for the moon: "NASA and Bigelow Aerospace are in the initial planning phases for a moon base. 'As part of our broader commercial space strategy, NASA signed a Space Act Agreement with Bigelow Aerospace to foster ideas about how the private sector can contribute to future human missions,' Said David Weaver NASA Associate Administrator for the Office of Communications."
Bigelow will be performing the study for free too. Robert Bigelow chatted with a radio host a few weeks ago about Bigelow's long-term space plans. They include refueling depots and a commercial moon base, since NASA isn't planning to go there.

How is this different from, oh I don't know, the last five decades? We use computers now to generate the "real estate brochure" artwork? And didn't Bigelow lay off half its work force a few years ago? Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the commercial value of a vacuum.

Is the gravity on the moon sufficient to prevent the bone de-calcification and muscle atrophy in humans there for a prolonged period of time? I know that people who go up to the ISS for a few months are irreparably damaged, though the idea of making a spinning station would counter most (if not all) of that. At 1/6 earth gravity, would humans suffer the same fate as they do in micro? Can they build a spinning habitat on the moon?

Is the atmosphere on the moon sufficient to prevent the de-oxygenation and breathing atrophy of humans there for a few seconds? How about the lack of a magnetoshpere? What is this obsession with sci-fi golly-gee Tom Swift fantasies about space? It's a hostile radiation-blasted vacuum with nothing in it. You have to bring the world's most advanced technology just to breathe. And what is so important on the Moon? It's the same periodic table of elements as on Earth. Plus here you have every specialist and eve

Have fun with your front-row seat watching the next asteroid impact on Earth. You're right in that there is no short or medium term justification for manned space exploration. In the long term, simply having some of our eggs in a second basket is sufficient justification.

Another long-term justification for a space program is protecting the one basket of eggs we've got now better. If that can be done with robots, fine. If it requires men, let's do it.

Have fun with your front-row seat watching the next asteroid impact on Earth. You're right in that there is no short or medium term justification for manned space exploration. In the long term, simply having some of our eggs in a second basket is sufficient justification.

Another long-term justification for a space program is protecting the one basket of eggs we've got now better. If that can be done with robots, fine. If it requires men, let's do it.

So basically this moon colony would have to be able to accommodate most of the world's population? Or would it just be the usual heads of state and their girlfriends that were lucky enough to be evacuated and carry on the glorious destiny of mankind?

Considering that a moon base would probably the the crowning achievement of humanity to that point, if those leaders could actually make it happen, perhaps they deserve to be safe from an asteroid.

Chances are good, however, that if there were leaders, there would also need to be servants, so I'd say that leadership would not be the only group saved, even if you take the most negative view of Those In Power possible.

And really, not even the powerful are evil or selfish just because they are powerful. Some l

Yes. All those other things are great, and currently have a lot of application, but nothing at all would compare with the ability to have a permanent presence on another planet, even a satellite like the moon. And to be clear, such a place would not be able to exist without the many of the other things you mention, but it would be one of the ultimate applications of that technology.

Every one of the achievements you mention ends up being ephemeral unless humanity's survival in the long term is assured.

The life raft 1km away is worth closer inspection. And is that an island with a few trees on it over yonder? I wonder if I got into the life raft, could I possibly reach the island and then see where that leaves me.

We can see these fireballs just fine from the Earth, I fail to see how getting a few hundred kilometers closer will change anything?

No, actually, we can't. The atmosphere interferes greatly with our ability to see: through distortion [wikipedia.org] and complete blockage at a whole range of wavelengths [wikipedia.org]. This is precisely why the Hubble Space telescope, which was typically around 500 km "closer", was such a stunning success.

What's on the moon is sunshine, real estate, and a relatively small escape velocity. Put a machine there to convert sun heat and moon dirt into silicon crystal boules. Then add a machine to make solar cells. Then add a machine to place them across the land. People will probably have to visit to get it all working. Having a place for them to stay would be nice. After a while you have enough power to do anything you want. Eg, make materials needed to build a rail launcher. Then you could, eg, send rocket fue

A HUGE problem for solar energy is not necessarily atmosphere, but dust. A massive array of panels/mirrors on Earth must be continually protected against sandstorms and dust accumulation. (This is because many of the massive mirror/panel arrays are placed in desert like environments, much like the moon).

Without rain to wash the panels and plants to keep the dust storms down, solar panels must be protected/maintained.

However, while the moon seems like it would be terrible due to the fact that it is basical

According to NASA [nasa.gov] it has yet to be determined what causes the bone degradation. The damage is also not "irreparable", though bone mass is not fully recovered. From the link:

The exact mechanism that causes the loss of calcium in microgravity is unknown. Many scientists believe that microgravity somehow causes bone to break down at a much faster rate than it is built up. However, the exact trigger for this rate change has not been found. Researchers are currently pursuing multiple lines of research, including hormone level, diet, and exercise, in order to determine exactly what causes -- and may control or prevent -- osteoporosis during space flight.

On Earth we see the same thing happen from time to time (my mother used to have it). Bones suddenly become weak to the point of breaking at the faintest impact. Doctor's orders were to drink lots of milk and other high-calcium foodstuffs, and it apparently went away to a degree that she was declared "cured". If (the lack of) gravity was the sole cause, we would not see this on Earth.

Here is the "official" Mars One answer to bone issues (site seems to be down now so copy and paste from Google Cache):
Prolonged weightlessness causes osteoporosis, which can be reduced by exercise and medicine. Research onboard the International Space Station has led to even better and more effective training programs being drawn up, and new machines being made specifically for astronauts. Conjointly, there have been major leaps forward in medications capable of partially preventing declining calcium leve

Yeah, I wouldn't put too much faith into that organisation, seems to be much more of a hoax than an actual genuine attempt at a mission. a link that's not down [etcjournal.com]

The Mars One project has received quite a bit of press lately. This project plans to establish a human colony on Mars in 2023 with four people. The project is the brainchild of Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch businessman. You must give him credit for creativeness. Much of the financing will come from a 24-hour television reality show that will follow every step of the project, including watching the new “Martians” as they adapt to the harsh Mars environment.

They conclude that because the colonists will be on Mars, they will have more density [wikipedia.org]. This is outright wrong, density is defined as p=m/V, on Mars neither your volume nor your mass [wikipedia.org] is going to change, your weight (W=m*g) will but that is not the term "m" in the equation.I can understand why they wouldn't care, since they don't plan on bringing their

How does the fact that it happens on Earth prove that microgravity isn't the only reason it happens to astronauts in space? Sure, maybe microgravity accelerates the natural process which also happens on Earth. I hope so because that would imply that research on preventing one might prevent both! But.. why couldn't it also be a totally unique mechanism that just has the same effect.

repairable doesnt mean 100% recovery. ever had a scar that never fully healed, leaving a small pock mark? It's repaired...but not 100% as some of the tissue is still missing compared to before. same concept.

Robert Zubrin, the "case for Mars" guy who seems to have thought a lot about months-long space journeys, believes that low-gravity bone loss can be mitigated by exercise. His data point is Shannon Lucid, who spent 179 days on the Mir space station, rigorously followed the prescribed exercise regime, and came back in significantly better physical condition than other members of her crew, who weren't as disciplined with their exercise regimes.

Even if he's wrong, this is a problem to be solved, rather than a reason not to try.

100% agree, and as another poster commented, the reason for de-calcification and atrophy is not 100% understood, so the spinning habitat may not be the solution.

Shielding against the radiation, recycling of water (closed loop) and growing of suitable flora (mushrooms) for food etc have already got numerous ideas for how to overcome them, the gravity differential, though, seems to me to be the big hurdle to keeping a person healthy on the moon, if it's the gravity that's the cause of the bone problem.

Honest question: How well does that turn out? We eat the fruiting body of most edible fungi (the mushroom). Do mushrooms sprout towards the light? Or do they rely on gravity to know which way is 'up'? Or is it simply that the cells nearest to the surface react with the increased oxygen and grow in 'that direction'?

How do you keep the spores controlled? On a short term timescale, I could see working in a mostly sealed area, but those spores are very (not v

Sorry for my poor google-fu, but the information is somewhat scant on the topic. The original PDF appears to be gone (someone with better skills than me might find it) but they did grow Mushrooms on the SpaceLab D2, and they grew fine.

First, you chose species that have spores which humans are most unlikely to be allergic to. And.. you test this on your astronauts before launch.

Second, air filters. The spores aren't allowed to just build up concentration in the enclosed area unchecked. Like everything else that is small and suspended in the air they would eventually end up in the air filters.

I'm guessing that the same species of mushroom which are good to eat are the ones with safe spores f

I wasn't necessarily concerned about people breathing them, obviously air can be kept to a certain particulate count. What I was curious about was how it could eventually build up on equipment over time. I've designed avionics, and one of the things you have to account for is fungal growth. While these spores wouldn't be the kind which like to colonize rubber gaskets, I could certainly see it becoming a problem of buildup over the years. I'm not saying it can't be solved, but mushrooms just seemed a bi

Even if it is gravity that causes the bone loss (seems likely) I don't think we can have any idea what 1/6th gravity will do over long term until we actually try it. One might think that 1/6th gravity would mean 5/6ths of the boneloss that occurs in 0g but that assumes the relationship is linear. For all we know there could be no extra bone loss at all until gravity gets quite close to 0 or maybe anything less than Earth gravity is just unlivable over the long term for humans.

How exactly are we to continue to grow as a species if we confine ourselves to this life of luxurious ease, squandering the finite resources of our home planet? We are on the cusp of the technology necessary for off-planet adventure, settlements, and discovery. Generations of men/women before us have sacrificed personal comforts to better our understanding of science, the World, the Solar System, etc. We are approaching understanding of the origin of the Universe and, indeed, life itself. Get up and do

It will be several orders of magnitude easier to save this planet, and survive almost any conceivable disaster, than it will ever be to colonize any other body in this solar system (or likely any other system within any possible reach).

If you do go to the moon, please stay away from the original moon landing sites. You may take pictures and live video of them (to shut up the nutters), but please don't trample those footprints. I may want to gaze on them myself some day.

but please don't trample those footprints. I may want to gaze on them myself some day.

Thermal cycling in the top two inches of regolith means that the footprints are likely already softened to mere depressions, and by the time you get there, they won't be recognisable. Sorry. But the hardware should be good for a few thousand years, decals will be bleached white or irradiated black, but it'll take a long time for micro-meteorites to erode the big pieces down to something unrecognisable to even an amateur visitor. Of course, we'll need to return the ascent modules first or the tourists will b

Corporate yahoos are the ones in charge now and libertarians are among those who don't like what the ones in charge now are doing. I suppose you're far from alone in confusing the corporatism we have now for the free markets that libertarians support, but that doesn't mean you're right to do so. They're nothing alike.

Sorry, but if you have unrestrained free markets, those seeking to maximise their wealth (and power) will inevitably band together into corporations, however you choose to name them. Bigger trading organisations have economies of scale for distribution, increased purchasing power, shared overhead expenses and so on. There is a reason that capitalism ended up with large corporations, they didn't magically appear out of nowhere to do evil.

I can't care about the nay sayers. The problem with NASA is funding and politics. Space projects take decades and commitment. And for at least a few decades you can think of private space companies as nonprofits.

It's better to just have NASA raise funds, devise national policy and sign contracts; an extension to what they were doing anyway. They just won't be micromanaging anymore. It also allows other governments or even individuals or corporations to contract with the same people and get it on the act.

Having private companies allows more insulation from political influence. It allows them to better focus on achieving something rather than making politicians happy. The same people that would have worked at JPL will instead be working for private equivalents. It's the same people, just a different letterhead.

The real problem is A) Harshness of the Moon environment and B) Earth's gravity well and the difficulty to get things out of it.

If we are really serious about starting a moon colony, the very first technology we need to look at is autonomous (by way of robots, or other similar devices) that would be able to remotely manufacture, construct, and build things using local resources. Sending "stuff" from Earth to the Moon will simply be too cost prohibitive, and human construction and resou

Hmm... GP is either a bigot, a troll or both and his statement is assinine but I don't see the racism. Is it because he writes about the president? He doesn't say anything about his race. He could just not like that one person for all we know. Is it because he mentions Chechens? Again, he doesn't say anything to imply they are all like the bombers. Or maybe it's because he refers to muslims as 'mozzie'. Sorry, Islam isn't a race it's a religion. He may be bigoted but that does not imply racism. Let's

And worth further noting, you all conveniently ignore the fact that I am right, you cannot complain that no WMD's were found in Iraq when the place is just lousy with IEDs and then call the Marathon bombs WMDs. You socialists don't seem to have the whole logic thing quite together there do you? Of course those of us with our eyes open have known this all along.

Facts... troublesome things.

I don't know any socialists who would agree that the Marathon bombs were WMDs. That's a rightwing US word choice.

Unlike planet Earth, the moon does not have a lot of water to be wasted

Sure, it got water (ice) but the amount is miniscule when compared to what we got right here on Earth

What I need to know more is the exact definition of "feasibility" in that study

If it means "can live on the moon for quite a while", of course, the amount of water on the moon is enough to support some people on the moon for some time

We need to understand this --- it's like archeology --- what we do today might affect the future generations --- if we dig up the ancient grave today we might get X number of discoveries

But if we leave that ancient grave untouched, and leave it to future generations who may have even better equipments and technologies to excavate that ancient grave, they may yield EVEN MORE INFORMATION than what we can obtain

Same thing on the moon

We can build moon base today, it's entirely feasible to get enough water to let some people survive there for some time

But if we do that, we are, inevitably, going to pollute the water, and diminish the amount of the already limited amount of water on the moon

In doing so, we might negatively affect the future of the future generations for their own moon explorations

That is why I am interested to know how they are going to define "feasibility" in their "feasibility study"

We need to understand this --- it's like archeology --- what we do today might affect the future generations --- if we dig up the ancient grave today we might get X number of discoveries But if we leave that ancient grave untouched, and leave it to future generations who may have even better equipments and technologies to excavate that ancient grave, they may yield EVEN MORE INFORMATION than what we can obtain

Tomorrow will always have better tech than today no matter what "today" you're talking about. If you always wait for tomorrow's tech, you'll wait forever; tomorrow never comes.

Generational colony ship leaves.Several generations later some form of FTL is invented. Colony ship is still generations away from any star system.People on Earth remember the colony ship from their history books. there is a huge public concern over their fate. The people of Earth regret having sent those poor people on this now 'pointless' mission. One of the first FTL ships is sent to 'rescue' their descendants.

When they finally arrive at a star system with a usable planet they orbit for some generations. They gather supplies, repair and upgrade their ship. They allow their population to grow. They build more ships.

Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky is one of the best 10 SciFi books, IMO, for it's somewhat reasonable idea of how that would turn out. If you're a trading ship that takes years or decades between stops, what do you trade?

this is actually one of the arguments for why we shouldnt wait for sometime in the future to make colony ships for interstellar exploration, but should instead start now.

My problem with the idea of colony ships is that the only sort of people who are prepared to go on a voyage in a cramped, windowless tin box until they die, and their children, and their grandchildren and...die are essentially insane and shouldn't be allowed anywhere outside of a padded cell.

The idea of being on a ship where everyone knew they were never going home frankly terrifies me.

My problem with the idea of colony ships is that the only sort of people who are prepared to go on a voyage in a cramped, windowless tin box until they die, and their children, and their grandchildren and...die are essentially insane and shouldn't be allowed anywhere outside of a padded cell.

You're assuming that they'll be cramped, windowless, and metallic. This is Bigelow Aerospace here - the biggest modern developer of inflatable space structures. Heck, you're assuming that 'windowless' will be a bad thing, and that 'cramped' can't be handled.

The idea of being on a ship where everyone knew they were never going home frankly terrifies me.

That's the thing though. What is 'home'? I've moved over 10 times. I've spent the better part of a continuous year sleeping in a tent. I'm probably closer to a cumulative 5 years. Our ancestors used to be wandering hunter-gatherers.

No they didn't. What, you think it was a secret, or the knowledge just mysteriously vanished from peoples minds? The fall of Rome wasn't over night, it was over decades. And the people didn't just vanish, nor did the knowledge. The "Dark Ages" following the "fall" of Rome, wasnt really dark. Really the only thing lacking was this huge overarching unification and relative stability granted by being part of the roman empire, and even that was only in europe.

There were a lot of technologies that were lost, though - mostly because once things did finally grind into the dirt, there wasn't enough of a societal structure left in the Western Empire to support learning or continuing such technologies, and literacy dropped to the point where re-learning from what little writings survived to that point was hit-or-miss at best.

both wrong. romans made hydraulic cement with ash from a volcano. this is cement that would set under water. this art was lost until the early 19th century, when some british buy (using the scientific method) rediscovered it.

Yes, the Romans had writing. For some time it was a popular game and exercise to go over the writings of ancient Rome and Greece to see if there might be some sort of technology or concept that hasn't been implemented in "modern society" (whatever that was). There certainly were things like aqueducts and even very sophisticated machines like the Antikythera device [wikipedia.org] that spoke of incredible engineering and design skills that existed in the past but were lost.

You mean like the old tales about Hyperborea or Atlantis? As far as we know Atlantis was actually a tale about the decline of the Minoan civilization after the explosion of the volcano in Crete. However I never heard any good explanation for the tales about Hyperborea. Then there are the tales of flying chariots in ancient Hindu literature, and others, which seem to indicate the existence for spacecraft in ancient times. I think it is not far fetched to conceive that alternative civilizations of higher tech

It isn't far fetched to conceive in fiction of some sort of spacecraft that existed anciently, but seriously..... are you saying that there was a civilization that existed anciently that was capable of spaceflight thousands of years ago?

There would be evidence in geological records as well as considerable archeological evidence that these civilizations existed... and that simply doesn't happen. You also have the time spans wrong as there are written records that go back 10,000 years and if you use the term

Not surprised you posted as AC, the only people more rabid than the space nutters on slashdot are...oh wait, no there's simply no one more rabid. Even libertarian Apple users of emacs are moderate by comparison.

No one is a bigger proponent of manned spaceflight than me but let me be brutally honest here: There will be no manned bases on the moon... ever. Oh, we'll go and study every interesting spot on the moon. We'll spend upwards of a month or more in certain areas of enormous interest. But humanity will not build a moonbase for permanent occupation. The technology and logistics are not insurmountable but the degree of difficulty will run smack into 'Why?'.

In terms of a huge government scientific research station similar to Amundsen-Scott Research Base in Antarctica being placed on the Moon with the current fiscal climate and the need for constant resupply from the Earth to sustain every possible need like it was some sort of submarine permanently stationed at a particular longitude/latitude? Yeah, I would have to agree with you that kind of activity will never happen on the Moon or for that matter anywhere else in the Solar System other than the current fis

A moon base makes sense as a place to do industry(mostly fuel production) in support of other space operations, but really only after we're capturing asteroids to use as raw materials. While the Moon still has an annoyingly deep gravity well, light gravity is far easier than no gravity for manufacturing.

If we can capture a CHON asteroid or two, then fuel becomes much cheaper, volatiles to keep a moon base going become practical (they'll never be practical to boost from Earth at any scale), and the benefit

A) Future generations can only get better at moon colonisation if we try, and learn, and maybe fail and learn some more. Just like today's archaeologists only got to be so good at archaeology because they stood on the shoulders of their less sophisticated predecessors.

B) There is a HELL of a lot more water on the moon than you think. Yes, only a tiny fraction of the Earth's but still way more than we can deplete in a thousand years of missions/ bases on the scale being discussed here.

C) The moon water will not be "polluted" or wasted away. Most of it will be recycled, ready to be re-used. Any sensible long-term moon plan will have water recycling as a core requirement. OK, some may end up scattered to the interplanetary void after being used as reaction mass or hydrogen fuel but again, not enough to be worried about.

D) By the time we deplete the moon's water, we should be more than capable of picking up more from asteroids/ comets/ elsewhere in space and transporting it to the moon.

Here's a classic sci-fi short story that deals with water as a (supposedly) limited resource for space travel and colonisation. It has hard numbers to help put the scale of the issue in context. Worth a read, and won't take too long: http://archive.org/details/TheMartianWay

I really don't think many of you appreciate how hard it will be to actually get to the water on the moon (in any usable form, anyway). IIRC, it's scattered in tiny amounts and mixed in with regolith. Getting to it will be less like digging a well and more like industrial gold mining. Hell, we have a hard enough time doing desalinization in large quantities on earth, and that's a LOT easier.

Water is going to need to be a recycled resource. The point of the parent post is that obtaining that water is going to be a difficult task akin to extracting gold from low-grade ore on the Earth right now, and I'd have to agree with him. You are used to sticking a bucket above your house and gathering water, or tossing a hose into a passing stream where water is literally rushing to your house or at least nearby. That simply doesn't happen on the Moon at all. You are more likely to get water in a bucke

It's also worth remembering that the "ancient grave" of water on the Moon is far more use to us in the near future than it would be to a future generation. After all, if they need water on the Moon, they would just be able to ship it to the Moon (due to all that fancy future tech and knowledge they'll have) while we don't have that luxury.

And there is, of course, time value where things are worth more today than they are in some distant future.

One of the oddities that people overlook in spaceflight, is that people with excess fat would make ideal colonists.

I don't think there is a more cost effective means in terms of payload to transport 'food and water' in a form usable to humans than fat people. I'm not talking morbidly obese, but an astronaut with 20kg extra weight is carrying pre-processed nutrients/energy/water in a form that requires the least amount of energy to turn back into work. As the astronaut burns off the excess fat, the wastes produced can be collected and reprocessed into useful water and fertilizers.

Consider the two options:A healthy astronaut with 20kg of fatA healthy astronaut with 0kg of excess and 20kg of food/water.

kg for kg, the stored fat will be much more efficient than 20kg of extra food/water.

I'm not so sure. The only reason you would have to be concerned about a limited gene pool over a long time period is if you never planned to add 'new blood' to the colony over time. In addition, while our current morals may consider it 'icky' once you reach the distance of second cousins, there risk of genetic problems is very diminished.

We might even want to be careful about trying to 'downselect' genetic disorders as well. Aside from some screening to ensure that there isn't some lethal combination yo

In terms of mass for a single transport to the moon, that would be the minimum required to get humans there. If you look at just a single flight. If you considered the overal cost of supporting the humans you grew from those sperm and eggs, you would need to send massive amounts of food and water as well.

What I'm saying, is that when launching something into space costs about $2000/kg, and you need to send MANY people to this protocolony to get it started, it actually makes logistical sense to consider '